The roots of intelligence?

With two-thirds of its neurons distributed not in the brain but throughout its tentacles, the physiology of the extremely savvy octopus isn’t the only Earthly life form that forces us to reassess the nature of perception and intelligence. There’s also the “swarm intelligence” of superorganisms, like ants, in which the individual and competing hierarchies are sacrificed for the efficiency of the horde. There’s a reason ants have been around for more than a hundred million years, and every reason to believe their relentless colonization will continue long after we’re gone.

Renowned myrmecologist Mark Moffett compares the phenomenon to “a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits,” whose perpetuation appears secure because “neither ant colonies nor supercomputers need consciousness to make smart choices.” Adds the research associate for the National Museum of Natural History, “It doesn't pay to consolidate power; better to have redundant operations with few or no established commands, as ants do."

“I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost” -- John Wyndham, “The Day of the Triffids”/CREDIT: spinoff.comicbookresources.com

If, as it appears, some form of intelligence, fused with high technology, lies at the heart of the UFO puzzle, why must all forms of intelligence mirror our own? Ants always come to mind when De Void hears the question: “If UFOs are real, why don’t they land on the White House lawn?” If leaderless superorganisms are part of the mix, a take-me-to-your-leader scenario simply doesn't compute. And the inter-species communication conundrum got even more puzzling recently after spending a little time with a provocative New Yorker magazine article, “The Intelligent Plant.” This one makes our as-yet-unsuccessful two-way conversations with dolphins look like a walk in the park.

Botanists are bitterly divided over the term “plant neurobiology,” which at least one source describes as “sophisticated behaviors observed in plants [that] cannot at present be completely explained by familiar genetic and biochemical mechanisms.” In that vacuum, one might confer intelligence onto the mystery. But given how plants show no evidence of neurons, brains or central nervous systems, the bias against the concept of intelligent flora is ostensibly well founded.

However, a small but growing community of botanists is making the case for plant intelligence resembling swarm behavior in (gulp) ant colonies. Employing electrical and chemical signaling, equipped with between 15 and 20 senses, exhibiting stress behaviors and inviting suggestions of echolocation without a central command center, plants — sedentary and nonambulatory though they are — may also be alerting researchers to the limitations of “cerebrocentric” intelligence. In fact, the data is already inspiring theoretical computer modeling based on “the distributed computing performed by thousands of roots processing a vast number of environmental variables.” One of these project collaborators is Italian plant physiologist Stefano Mancuso, who has worked with the European Space Agency on plant behavior in extreme environments and managed to get some experiments aboard a space shuttle mission in 2011.

Mancuso told the New Yorker that a fuller comprehension of plants “would be like being in contact with an alien culture. But we could have all the advantages of that contact without any of the problems — because it doesn’t want to destroy us.”

Maybe not. But forget domination and conquest; a simpler question is, how does one even begin to interpret torrents of information from a superorganism whose interactions with its environment in no way reflects our own? Plants may work off a completely different time dimension from ours, they may appear static, but as this time-lapse video indicates, they are plenty capable of active, intentional behaviors. Plants may be glacially slow, but as writer Michael Pollan points out, they dominate our planet with 99 percent of Earth’s biomass. There’s a reason for that - and perhaps, as well, a cautionary note about attempting to extrapolate the motives of UFOs from our own limited experiences.

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[...] spotted in Cape Coral?Update to First Canadian UFO report of 2014The roots of intelligence?UFOs, ghosts and a wolfmanThe Salinas, California Crop Circle [...]

freeman69

Saturday, January 4, 2014 at 12:41 pm

Found the following interesting video of swarm robotics (which for some reason I found slightly unnerving!)http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1358452306
It's not so much of a leap to think that alien intelligence would seem similar to us. Intelligence is used to perceive and navigate our environment and to enable us to act within it. High level motivations might vary (within limits), but I'm betting that members of one civilization will tend to include intelligence-led behaviours that are seen in all other intelligent societies. (Also, not-so-intelligence led behaviours.)
Dolphins live in a very different environment, but in some places they've learnt to co-operate with fishermen for mutual benefit i.e. where interests overlap.
Maybe we don't all keep our brains in the same place, but Maslow had a point.

ThomasT

Sunday, January 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm

Ignoring these smoke and mirrors, simply open http://www.theyfly.com and get updated. If you want to scream fraud, as this doesn't come from nasa, seti, astronomers nor Govt, and it upsets your narrow paradigm, or you are a Govt misinformer, keep in mind that Meier, the Swiss et contactee published data on our Solar System sometimes years ahead of nasas's discoveries, that from et or from his personal observations from aboard et craft

albert

Sunday, January 5, 2014 at 8:26 pm

Fascinating stuff, but I couldn't help thinking about "Little Shop of Horrors" There are a variety of carnivorous plants on Earth, including huge pitcher plants that are known to 'capture' small rodents. Who's to say that there aren't alien carnivorous plants that could feed on us? Maybe they keep them as pets:

"Directions: Keep your plant happy and well watered. Diet: One large or two
small humans per week. They prefer live prey."

Remember the plant/human hybrid in "The Thing from Another World" (1951) (That's classic sci-fi film which seems tame compared to todays sci-fi flicks, with their way overdone CGI and highly unrealistic sound effects.)

Regarding the octopus and its 'brains'. Distributed control is nothing new. Industrial automation has used distributed processing since before computers made it to the factory floor. Those old relay panels were event-driven, parallel control systems. Yeah, Mother Nature did it first, but we developed these concepts without the 'inspiration' from MN.

The whole paragraph containing the phrase "...the data is already inspiring theoretical computer modeling based on “the distributed computing performed by thousands of roots processing a vast number of environmental variables.” ..." threw me at first. It refers to a 'plant-based computer'. Might be a little slow, though.

That said, your point about recognizing alien intelligence is well taken, though I'd like to see more examples of human intelligence first.

I gotta go...

freeman69

Monday, January 6, 2014 at 7:39 am

Albert's observation about instinctive behaviour could be expanded upon:
Don't ants react when detecting chemicals released by other ants? I.e. instinct is a pre-programmed reaction to a given input. Decision-making is the key to understanding higher lifeforms.
We shouldn't forget that for E.T.s to develop any science & technology, they would need to be (on average) rational. Mathematics is often touted as being a language common to all alien civilizations because it's built upon the identification of universal laws. But to initially identify each law, an entity has to apply logic to an abstract idea.
When considering what would make an intelligent alien, alien; first strip away our cultural baggage and then list the potential differences (including motivations), remembering that we inhabit a common universe.

orang

Monday, January 6, 2014 at 10:30 am

although it's not really a distributed intelligence, take a look as Washington DC--their brains are in their a--.

albert

Monday, January 6, 2014 at 3:33 pm

@freeman69: Well put! I would want to restrict my investigation to 'pure' mathematics, not anything to do with physics, or God forbid, cosmology, whose theories are basically unprovable. Sufficiently advanced cultures, by definition, would have radically different information about such things, but C = pi * D is pretty solid. (P.S. Re: "swarm robotics". 'Creepy' is the word I use, and I'm a software guy.)
.

@orang: It's conditioned behavior that looks like instinctive behavior It's similar to training animals with rewards: do the trick, and you get a treat. The question is: can conditioned behavior become instinctive behavior over time?
.

I gotta go...

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